The Warden entered at this moment: and close behind him came the Lord Chancellor, a little flushed and out of breath, and adjusting his wig, which appeared to have been dragged partly off his head. “But where is my precious child?” my Lady enquired, as the four took their seats at the small side-table devoted to ledgers and bundles and bills. “He left the room a few minutes ago—with the Lord Chancellor,” the Sub-Warden briefly explained. “Ah!” said my Lady, graciously smiling on that high official. “Your Lordship has a very _taking_ way with children! I doubt if any one could _gain the ear_ of my darling Uggug so quickly as _you_ can!” For an entirely stupid woman, my Lady’s remarks were curiously full of meaning, of which she herself was wholly unconscious. The Chancellor bowed, but with a very uneasy air. “I think the Warden was about to speak,” he remarked, evidently anxious to change the subject. But my Lady would not be checked. “He is a clever boy,” she continued with enthusiasm, “but he needs a man like your Lordship to _draw him out_!” The Chancellor bit his lip, and was silent. He evidently feared that, stupid as she looked, she understood what she said _this_ time, and was having a joke at his expense. He might have spared himself all anxiety: whatever accidental meaning her _words_ might have, she _herself_ never meant anything at all. “It is all settled!” the Warden announced, wasting no time over preliminaries. “The Sub-Wardenship is abolished, and my brother is appointed to act as Vice-Warden whenever I am absent. So, as I am going abroad for a while, he will enter on his new duties at once.” “And there will really be a Vice after all?” my Lady enquired. “I hope so!” the Warden smilingly replied. My Lady looked much pleased, and tried to clap her hands: but you might as well have knocked two feather-beds together, for any noise it made. “When my husband is Vice,” she said, “it will be the same as if we had a _hundred_ Vices!” “Hear, hear!” cried the Sub-Warden. “You seem to think it very remarkable,” my Lady remarked with some severity, “that your wife should speak the truth!” “No, not _remarkable_ at all!” her husband anxiously explained. “_Nothing_ is remarkable that _you_ say, sweet one!” My Lady smiled approval of the sentiment, and went on. “And am I Vice-Wardeness?” “If you choose to use that title,” said the Warden: “but ‘Your Excellency’ will be the proper style of address. And I trust that both ‘_His_ Excellency’ and ‘_Her_ Excellency’ will observe the Agreement I have drawn up. The provision I am _most_ anxious about is this.” He unrolled a large parchment scroll, and read aloud the words “‘_item_, that we will be kind to the poor.’ The Chancellor worded it for me,” he added, glancing at that great Functionary. “I suppose, now, that word ‘_item_’ has some deep legal meaning?”